Expats will find working or studying at Sofia University to be similar to conducting business at other Bulgarian institutions - if you can move beyond the inane bureaucracy, the quality of the people you encounter will surprise you.

The university draws a lot of expats to Bulgaria because it's one of the few internationally accredited institutions of higher learning in the country. We've all met them: Swedish language teachers, scholars researching Ottoman history and international students seeking an East European adventure all come for stints at Sofia University.

But Bulgarian professors and students operate differently than their counterparts in Western Europe and North America, so many of these visitors find themselves scratching their heads after a week on campus. That was my experience. I taught journalism at Sofia University as a Fulbright Scholar during the spring semester last year.

To dispense with the pettiest aspect of my story, let me first describe the most annoying part of my experience: The Journalism and Mass Communications Department's daytime security guard, a white-haired gentleman who might be described as belonging to a generation from Bulgaria's less democratic era.

Every Friday I asked this gentleman for the key to open the door to my lecture hall. Every Friday he told me my course was not on the list of courses for the day. Every Friday - often surrounded by my locked-out students - I told him the list was wrong. No, he insisted. Yet, every Friday, he eventually gave me the key.

It became like a game between he and I. How long would it take the professor to convince the security guard to give him the key the professor managed to obtain every Friday, though this Friday could, of course, be an exception?

Every Friday after my lecture, by the way, I asked the department's secretary to put my name on the aforementioned list. More on her later.

Once I managed to enter the classroom, I encountered a second oddity: The students' approach to attendance.

My course, entitled "American and British Journalism" and conducted in English, opened with 40 registered students. Most spoke English well, were intelligent and, as befits college kids, were passionate about their studies and future.

By the middle of the semester, however, class attendance averaged 20 students. By the last month of the semester, attendance had boiled down to a hard-core group of 10. I was reconsidering my favourable view.

On the last day of the semester, only six of the hard-core students submitted the sole assignment for the course: a long story that required them to immerse themselves in someone else's life for two or more days. One drove around with an ambulance crew. Another accompanied a cleaning lady on her rounds. The stories were quite good.

You'd think the paltry showing of that last day would have surprised me, but by then other professors had told me my course's attendance wasn't that bad. In fact, it was pretty good, given the students' schedules.

Sofia University students, at least in journalism, take about 12 courses a semester. When I first heard this number, I thought it was a joke. How can anyone focus on their studies when they are taking 12 courses? Perhaps I was culturally ignorant. In the United States, college students rarely enrol in more than five courses a semester. No, I wasn't ignorant. The number was a joke.

As my students explained, they coped with this unheard-of schedule by simply ignoring some of their courses. Nobody attended all 12 courses in a week. Some never set foot in a particular lecture for the entire semester. Instead, they appointed someone to be the note-taker for a course and simply used his or her notes to prepare for the all-important exam at the end of the term, the only factor that determined their final grade.

I'm aware this practice resembles that of much of Europe. But when I heard that professors often don't attend their own lectures, because apparently they, too, overload themselves with impossible schedules they don't even try to follow, I knew I was onto something unique.

Many students also work 40 hours a week. Their bosses are good enough to give them an hour or two off everyday, so between, say, answering phones or selling shoes, they run to the university, attend class, then run back to their jobs. A nonessential course like mine was - understandably - less important than a paycheque.

Because the assignments I received were very good and because the students who submitted them had attended the course regularly, spoken in class and generally showed real potential as journalists, I intended to give them all the top grade of six. The 10 or so students who were still registered for the class but didn't submit stories, I failed. They received twos. There are no ones or zeroes.

I found, however, that I couldn't submit my grades. My Fulbright and Sofia University's academic year weren't quite in sync. Whereas I was scheduled to leave Bulgaria in mid-June, grades were counted later in the month. The department secretary told me to hold my grades, to which I responded that I was leaving the country and wouldn't be around. Could I fax them to her? No, I needed to sign some documents. Well, I wouldn't be in the country. She said I would have to come back.

I told her I wasn't returning solely for the formality of passing in grades. I informed her that I was the professor and she was the secretary. She would have to yield to my schedule, or else students in her country's most prestigious university would go without their grades. This strategy was no more successful than when I used it on the security guard.

A day later, the department's assistant dean - a professional woman who was very helpful throughout the semester, but had little role in my day-to-day experience at the university - stepped in and convinced the secretary to print out the form I needed to submit my grades. As usual, normal business was finalised by calling on "someone you know".

The lesson of the security guard and the secretary, and of the student's attendance, is that the university, like the Bulgarian Government, functions unto itself, heedless of the needs or wishes of the people it is supposed to serve. The good work some professors and students manage to produce there is a testament to them and the future they are helping to create.